Evaporation-Driven Crystallization of Diphenylalanine Microtubes for Microelectronic Applications

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• 作者：Alla Nuraeva ; Semen Vasilev ; Daria Vasileva ; Pavel Zelenovskiy ; Dmitry Chezganov ; Alexander Esin ; Svetlana Kopyl ; Konstantin Romanyuk ; Vladimir Ya. Shur ; Andrei L. Kholkin
• 刊名：Crystal Growth & Design
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：March 2, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：16
• 期：3
• 页码：1472-1479
• 全文大小：447K
• ISSN：1528-7505

文摘

Self-assembly of supramolecular biomaterials such as proteins or peptides has revealed great potential for their use in various applications ranging from scaffolds for cell culture to light-emitting diodes and piezoelectric transducers. Many of these applications require controlled growth of individual objects in the configuration allowing simple transfer to the desired device. In this work, we grew millimeter-long diphenylalanine (FF) self-assembled microtubes with high aspect ratio via evaporation-driven crystallization of nonsaturated FF solutions, making use of the Marangoni flow in the drying droplets. The growth mechanism was investigated by measuring the microtube length as a function of time. Jerky (steplike) growth behavior was observed and explained by a self-activated process in which additional activation energy is provided through condensation. The calculated growth rate due to the diffusion-controlled process is in agreement with the experimentally measured values. The grown microtubes were successfully transferred to metallized patterned substrates, and their specific conductivity and piezoelectric properties were evaluated as a function of the applied voltage and frequency. A number of piezoelectric resonances were observed and attributed to different vibrational modes excited by the piezoelectric effect inherent to the FF structure.